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I'm sorry, but after seeing how the IMF and the World Bank basically actively keep the desperate state of Africa up, causing horrible wars and mass-starvation, just for the wealth of the "west",I, for one, proudly proclaim, that anyone who tries to kick their asses for that cause, is a hero to me, and anyone who disagrees will be force-moved to Africa, and get a good luck wish from me. (Won't help him one bit though).

Luckily, I know most people here are pretty educated about such things.

P.S.: If it was China, which I disagree with, I don't think they did it for that cause though.

The purpose is to provide sufficient excuse to continue military spending. You may recall the USA hit it's debt limit and is about to default. This will persuade the dissenting politicians that they should vote for an increase in the limit.

Haha, I was wondering what "America has defaulted on its Chinese loans!" means? Does that mean we are going to be evicted? That is what CountryWide Loans did to me and my wife when we defaulted on our mortgage. "Whoopsie, catch you next month?" didn't cut is for us too many times. Doesn't Proverbs or something read "A borrower is slave to the lender?" and "Never a borrower or lender be?" I guess nobody played Monopoly either. Here's one thing about playing Monopoly, what happens when the big kid flips the board over and pounds you with your own Radio Flyer Wagon?

China: "USA...you land on Park Place, it has hotel, you owe me, I win!USA: "grrrr...."China: "you empty pockets NOW!"USA: "You want wants in my pockets? Ok...here you go. BOOOOOOOOM, it's a thermal nuke from space! I guess you shouldn't try hacking us..lol."China: "Jokes on you, we have nanobot and organic weapons we have been seeding you from Wal-Mart! You will all turn to zombies, we will rule the world!"Australia: "Eastern Australia is attacking Western Australia...I need card, and I am strat moving all my armies to Siam....What?"Britain: "I say old chap, you are playing the wrong game! It's Monopoly, not RISK."Alfred E. Newman: What? Me worry?

If so, the IMF takes over our economy. Judging from what they have done to countries like Malawi, Niger, and other victims, they will sell our assets off at pennies on the dollar to domestic and foreign corporations, force the end to the social safety net, workers rights, and any charitable work by the government. Famine and other cases of human suffering has no effect on the IMF. Corporate profit is all that matters.
We will be owned by the people who forced this crisis. It is called "Disaster Capitalism

If so, the IMF takes over our economy. Judging from what they have done to countries like Malawi, Niger, and other victims, they will sell our assets off at pennies on the dollar to domestic and foreign corporations, force the end to the social safety net, workers rights, and any charitable work by the government. Famine and other cases of human suffering has no effect on the IMF. Corporate profit is all that matters.

We will be owned by the people who forced this crisis. It is called "Disaster Capitalism."

It's happening in the USA too. At the state and Federal level we're being told that we can no longer afford workers' rights and the social safety net, though somehow we can afford tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.

Basically, those who already have most of the money are using its power to squeeze more out of those who only have a little.

Read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.
Remember the spending was on tax cuts for millionaires and wars that only served to fill the pockets of the rich war profiteers. Now the corporatist want to give more tax cuts to the rich, then cut services for the poor, old, and sick.
The rich have looted our treasury and now want us of the working class to pay for their treasonous act.

Oh I know - I lived through the 1970's. I remember the price of a corvette before and after.

You are forgetting, however, that inflation is now calculated differently. I don't really care what those numbers say anymore because they are now completely fictitious since the 1990's. Living outside the US I can see what's happening to the exchange rates - the US dollar used to be strong, a "safe haven". Not anymore. But hey why should I care, I'm sitting on a fair chunk of gold and silver (the real thing, not "

Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."

Not as difficult to trace as "unnamed security experts".

I'm going to get flack from a hopper load of "Certifeyed" "Ethical Hackers" (with links to their business touting security blogs in their homepage link but...

an "unnamed security expert" is an oxymoron (they tend to be attention whores). Seriously - it's like reading "an unnamed actor today said he/she had been asked to take over
Charlie Sheen's job". Bullshit. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't stop 'em from letting the media know who they were - ev

Sadly North Korea isn't much like China. Refugees flee North Korea to what looks to them like the free, peaceful and democratic utopia of China - that's how bad North Korea is from what little we can work out from the outside. I know someone from China that last heard from their North Korean relatives around thirty years ago when relations between the two countries broke down. It's a country that doesn't trust anybody and seems to be run right out of the pages from 1984.

You have led a sheltered life if you have to ask that question. As phucked up as US foreign policy is, the US is still the lesser of all the available evils. At least here in the US, we can (and do) speak out about our policies. Try that in China.

First of all, if its on youtube it must be the truth.
Secondly "clips" taken out of context does not equal truth
Third, it is possible this kind of thing happens, just like when terrorists use human shields to protect themselves, planting evidence to make it look like a civilian, and other such events.
Fourth, you troll.

6 vets, one now a professor of law. All named, so you can google them and find references in any number of news agencies. You can't just shrug it off as "it's on youtube".

Third, it is possible this kind of thing happens, just like when terrorists use human shields to protect themselves, planting evidence to make it look like a civilian, and other such events.

So if named vets are saying it happens, and you are admitting it may well happen, what's your point? And why are you calling the OP a troll? Because you don't want to hear stuff about the US army that makes you uncomfortable?

So it was all the elites who were dancing in the streets last month when the US executed Osama Bin Laden? You guys just don't get it. Pulling that kind of crap is exactly why everyone else in the world detests US foreign policy.

If you still can't see it, consider the arrest of Ratko Mladic the other day. Almost identical situation, except Mladic personally helped to execute at least twice as many people as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, so you could say he is more evil than OBL. And he was arrested and taken to the ICC. He wasn't shot in the head and dumped in the ocean, because that is not how civilised societies deal with criminals.

The way the US public cheers the fact that their government can and does execute anyone in the world with no due process, and is perfectly entitled to invade any country they don't like makes me feel physically ill.

While I support a reliance on the rule of law in theory, your example points out the exception. The breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in a war that dragged on for 10 years. Over 100,000 people died as a result, over a third of them innocent civilians. The European community, particularly Britain, France, and Germany, were incapable of halting an atrocity-filled war on their very doorstep. For all we know the war would still be going on today if the Americans hadn't stepped in and stopped it.

Bullshit. You ate the neo-lib propaganda about "humanitarian war" - hook, line and sinker.

"Humanitarian war" was designed to get comfortable, right-thinking and educated people to support wars of aggression and domination. The Clinton's were used as the messengers in the states, to sell this as "progressive" policy in the "post-Cold War" era. If you need to look deeper into any "hints", try examining the "accidental" bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade. "Whoops".

Get this through your head: When you stick your head in the sand, there's still a lot of you exposed. It's your kind of thinking that let the war go on 10 years with no end in sight.

Over 30,000 civilians were already dead when American bombing brought the war to an end. Why aren't you weeping for them? Or better still be thankful for the civilian casualties that were avoided when the Americans brought the war to an end.

Better to let the war rage on and keep wringing your hands from the sidelines?

The European community, particularly Britain, France, and Germany, were incapable of halting an atrocity-filled war on their very doorstep. For all we know the war would still be going on today if the Americans hadn't stepped in and stopped it

Is that how the US news networks presented it to you? That's not what happened. There was no attempt by Britain, France, and Germany which failed, followed by the US cavalry saving the day at the end. In reality it was 15 countries of NATO (including the ones you mentioned) that acted together to push the war to a close.

No attempt by Britain, France, and Germany that failed? I guess you've never heard of the Brijuni Agreement, the Carrington-Cutileiro plan, the Vance-Owen plan, the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, or the Contact Group plan. All primarily European efforts at peace that failed miserably. How did they differ from the Dayton Accords? That's right, the big stick. Because while it's all well and good to say, "You kids stop that fighting!" in the end somebody has to actually go in and separate the parties and be able

I'm pretty sure that killing him was not the intended goal. It sort of robbed the american people of a bit of justice, and robbed politicians of some much needed political capital. Sort of like the ending of Lost.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.
So it was all the elites who were dancing in the streets last month when the US executed Osama Bin Laden? You guys just don't get it. Pulling that kind of crap is exactly why everyone else in the world detests US foreign policy.
If you still can't see it, consider the arrest of Ratko Mladic the other day. Almost identical situation, except Mladic personally helped to execute at least twice as many people as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, so you could say he is more evil than OBL. And he was arrested and taken to the ICC. He wasn't shot in the head and dumped in the ocean, because that is not how civilised societies deal with criminals.

The way the US public cheers the fact that their government can and does execute anyone in the world with no due process, and is perfectly entitled to invade any country they don't like makes me feel physically ill.

"I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.

"Pick it up."

"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."

"Pick up the gun."

"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my

It's just that - like David Headley - the states in question are the US and Israel, with proxy handlers in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

"At a conference I was at this week, Daniel Ellsberg recounted a time in 1969 when he explained to Henry Kissinger what would happen after he was given the dozen or so clearances above Top Secret (the existence of which is also classified, of course). What happens first is you feel like a fool. You've published books that you now discover were fill

Look, it's very simple: if someone hits you, you can either a: hug it out, b: cry and run away, c: hit back

a and b is weak. c is strong, and sends a message. I was bullied in school until I grew a pair. A kid pushed me into a locker, just to be an asshole, so I turned around, grabbed his face, and I slammed him into the floor with his head. He was lucky he didn't get a concussion (so was I, people were ready to call the police). But I never got bullied again a

It's an odd distinction. Where do you place Arkan on a "line" between Osama bin Laden and Ratko Mladic? Was he a state actor or a non-state actor? Those are just words. The deeds these three men have done were funded and supported by people in power, otherwise they wouldn't have achieved this much violence.

They're not just words. State officials everywhere have mutual agreements that state officials should be treated with respect, even when totally evil. Since they're state officials, they can enforce it. That's why Osama got a bullet while Saddam got a trial in Iraq. It's why the best movie villains are diplomats or heads of state; they're part of a club of world leaders that protect each other, at least superficially.

our government that been hijacked by a very small number of elites and Obama is just doing their bidding.

Elites and Obama? You're clearly a right winger and a Fox News viewer. Just because the other side won the last election you don't get to forget that it was Bush who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the full backing of Fox News and people like you.

It's be great if Obama got out of there ASAP. But he didn't create the situation, he inherited it from Bush.

You have led a sheltered life if you have to ask that question. As phucked up as US foreign policy is, the US is still the lesser of all the available evils. At least here in the US, we can (and do) speak out about our policies. Try that in China.

What's the point of repeating this concept every day? That's pretty much all you can do right now. Talk.

> Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign governmentSo this "unnamed security expert" sees the IMF as a (world?) government or as part of some (the american?) government.Or what does the word "foreign" mean here?

Many in the world view the IMF as the European arm[1] of the Western Powers. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis the IMF recommended actions (e.g. allow important/strategic local banks to fail or to be bought up by foreign companies) that the US and other western countries would not take in their own crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#IMF_Role [wikipedia.org]

Those actions arguably weakened the countries more than they would have otherwise. One can compare those countries with Malaysia (which declined the IMF's "help" and "advice"). Some later spun the results as Malaysia not recovering as much but if the country doesn't crash as low naturally it doesn't rise back as much;).

One example is that the IMF stopped Malawi from stockpiling grain, and many people died of starvation as a result:

"... when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawiâ(TM)s âoeworst ever famine.â There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

We've essentially defaulted, just by the equivalent of someone in debt getting more credit cards to "pay" their bills, in a pile of self-referential paper pyramid scams with no basis in real wealth . To speak of "the full faith and credit of the United States" is such a farce, the U.S. is beyond bankrupt with liabilities far exceeding the ever-shrinking assets.

I know what you're getting at, but the biggest effect of defaulting is losing the faith of those who might give you loans. Saying we've "essentially defaulted" when this is not the case is stretching the word "defaulted" pretty thin. The picture is a little nicer if you consider debt as a fraction of GDP, but it's still not rosy. What do you mean by "ever-shrinking" assets?

Our total obligations are many time GDP, despite the usual old saw you are trying to invoke that only considers "national debt". The nations that are coming to power and that will soon surpass the U.S. in every way have already lost faith in the USA and have begun the move away from the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt holding. More and more countries will lose faith in the dollar and move from U.S. securities and use of the dollar. We are losing, via outsourcing and globalization, the ability to generate real

The Democrats had control and did nothing but continue the "retarded" Republican agenda. Obama might as well be named Bush the 3rd. Besides our insane military spending, there are other longer term obligations that would have to be curtailed too. But I agree with the core of your argument, we could easily pay off the debt if our lawmakers were rational. But instead, they are in the pockets of large corporations including the banking cartel, defense contractors, fossil fuels, etc. so this will not happe

People complain about the IMF but they never question what led them needing the IMF in the first place.

That's kind of like saying "People complain about baliffs but they never question what led them needing the bailiffs in the first place."

For sure the IMF, like bailiffs go in when a country has financial problems. But they are not there to serve the interests of the country with the financial problems. They actually make their financial problems worse. The IMF is there so that the rich countries can recoup cents on the dollar on their failed investments.

I think it was Bin Laden. He realized his body was not going to last much longer, so he had it copied onto those thousands of USB drives and hidden in various files using steganography techniques. Then, when the US forces analysed them, the bits of Bin Laden's consciousness became assembled in the US government's computer networks. From there, it was trivial for Bin Laden's digital ghost to get into the IMF.

Why would a large organization always mean a country? Why not a large bank that wants to know in advance how much risk is really involved in lending money to Greece? Goldman-Sachs has been rumbeling in that area more than enough already.

The banksters themselves could be the cause and the reason. Only the banksters have reason to lose money that cannot be traced. By blaming some unknown "enemy", these banksters use the classic maneuver of mis-direction. No one would expect a den of thieves, liars and charlatans to steal from themselves and then claim not knowing their system that has been in place for hundreds of years.

Remember Stuxnet? it was deliberately designed to infect machines that were not connected to the internet by jumping aboard USB thumb drives. Just not being connected to the net isn't enough, although it certainly helps isolate you from the vast majority of the attacks an outside force could try. If that machine is in contact with any other machines, in any way, it's possible to be compromised unless even greater security measures are implemented.

Which indicates that the systems were running Windows XP which is the only OS out there with the autorun "feature". If you're using a Windows OS to run critical industrial facilities then you really deserve to be hacked and have your facility shut down. This system was never intended to do that.

If you want a secure setup use a decent Unix variant to run your servers; you can even have them accessible from the outside if you know what you're doing.

You don't need autoplay for infection. Most viruses in the times of DOS spread in floppy disks, and there was no autoplay feature in DOS. Whatever system you are using, it has to access the media in order to learn about things like its filesystem, even before that, there has to be a driver of some sort for the actual hardware. If there is a bug in the code handling any of these things, an infection can occur long time before any autorun feature would even kick in.

You don't need autoplay for infection. Most viruses in the times of DOS spread in floppy disks, and there was no autoplay feature in DOS. Whatever system you are using, it has to access the media in order to learn about things like its filesystem, even before that, there has to be a driver of some sort for the actual hardware. If there is a bug in the code handling any of these things, an infection can occur long time before any autorun feature would even kick in.

Did you have the light on when you had breakfast? Me thinks you ate a bowl full of thick pills instead of your wheeties! I hope so - because otherwise you are barking mad.

In the days of MS/PC/4/IMB-DOS malware (like "del. > nul" in a setup.bat) on floppy drives required the user to actually execute the.exe/.com/.bat file.

Propagation through Interrupt 13. When BIOS routines managed all disk access for the OS.

01h 02h and 03h were the handler subs which gave you a vector for the MBR-type of virus.

McAfee used to update signatures quarterly...

No dispute there. But.... it still requires user intervention. I know some of the GNU folk'll hate me - but an OS - from Windows to Oberon can be compromised by the user. If the user is stupid. If one does something detrimental to oneself it. is. stupid. Even rocket scientists can be stupid. A rocket scientist who lights a cigarette beside a leaking oxygen cylinder is stupid. Our choice of OS and how we treat that choice is like choosing how many leaking oxygen cylinders we keep close by. Because we're huma

Actually Stuxnet has been analyzed pretty well and would have attacked Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - no autoplay required. Remember the purpose of placing a USB key in one of these machines is to copy data from / to it because the machines aren't networked and the data has to be analyzed. In this case, a couple of zero day vulnerabilities were utilized that caused Windows to get infected by just opening the folder. Mark Russinovich did a nice, digestible 3 part write up on it that starts here:

Which indicates that the systems were running Windows XP which is the only OS out there with the autorun "feature". If you're using a Windows OS to run critical industrial facilities then you really deserve to be hacked and have your facility shut down. This system was never intended to do that.

If you want a secure setup use a decent Unix variant to run your servers; you can even have them accessible from the outside if you know what you're doing.

That is false, I'm afraid.

A guy at IBM did an online presentation about that. Ubuntu, by default, comes with thumbnail generation activated by default when you insert a USB drive (no autorun, though). After that, he took advantage of a few shortcomings of PDF and video which, combined with this default conf, escalated his privileges all the way to root. Lost the video link, maybe other/.ers may help.

Conclusion: the choice of OS is not, by itself, a security measure. Servers running Windows can be secure, a

You already lost the game, when you accepted belief instead of facts.I, as a social engineer, would thrive on you, if I weren't on your side here.Basically, you already did my job. All I would have to do, is feed you "news" about whatever reality I want you to believe in. Causing you to act, based upon that "reality". Resulting in whatever I want you to do. You'd even defend me against others, because your beliefs would be me.Yes, "evil" just doesn't describe it anymore. And yes, that's why it's only acceptable for me, to do something good with it. (Like educate people about it.)

If you want to know what to think, look at this: Pierce’s cycle of scientific knowledge development.Notice how it says "observation". Personal observation. And even that can deceive you. (Hence there are optical illusions and "magicans".)But it's the best you've got. And rational thinking (logic is good, but they can't free you from emotions [youtube.com]) does the rest.Everything else, news, friends, books, me... are just external sources, and hence inherently can't give you any guarantees. You can choose to trust them. But then you also trust their agenda. As all they say, is for the purpose of that agenda. (That's not evil. It's just natural. Their agenda can also be something good to you.)

You already lost the game, when you accepted belief instead of facts. (...) So make wise choices, and when in doubt, never ever "believe".:)

The future is always conjecture, whether you're trying to choose a pickup line or decide what your major in college should be. True, generally compliments work better than insults but you'll never have the facts until afterwards. Life is not a scientific experiment because it's impossible to recreate, or as the old Greeks put it: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." When you have the facts it is already history, you can not go back and change th

Ah, I see for the moment the Party Line requires that Obama be an empty suit. No doubt when it's time to pass some legislation, he'll be an evil satanic genius perverting the system from within.

If you want energy prices to go down, the only thing that's going to make that happen is the civil wars in the middle east being resolved. That and gutpunching the oil companies and putting our boots on their necks for intentionally manipulating the market, but with the Republicans being what they are I'll count o

That and gutpunching the oil companies and putting our boots on their necks for intentionally manipulating the market

I read somewhere last week that a study has come out showing that 90% of the people driving oil prices up (by betting thus on the market) were just financial racketeers who don't actually do business related to oil.

Speculators do not make the price of the product they speculate in. They TAKE the price. When the price moves in their favor, they make money. When the price moves against them, they lose money. If you want to know what is moving the price of oil, consider the fact that China is a country with about 5 times the population of the US, with an economy that is growing at over 10% per year. China just last year has REPLACED the US as Germany's biggest customer. Ye

You're both right. Speculators on mass can of of course move the price enormously. See the.com boom. Lots of buyers seeing.coms as the next big thing, boosted by on-line stockbroking bringing in lots of new speculators into the market.

The growth of China obviously effects the oil price too.

And then there are other causes - the wars in the middle east, the uprisings in north africa, the Deepwater Horizon, the fact that we are near peak oil, and more...

But think of the banks and their shareholders. In the 1960-80's all that lovely cash was just flowing to provide basic services and jobs of life.
Now you have for profit - but still not natural monopolies in 100% private hands.
When the IMF is done with Greece, a few more people will be set for generations of wealth for cents on the $.

So who are these new players in the game? Old players just firing a shot off the IMF's bow with this new fangled warfare of cyberwarfare? Here's a question, who's to gain from all of this?

The IMF is a privately owned bank. It's been set up by the oldest players there is, Rothschilds. They are American Royalty and no one really knows what their worth is. Immense just isn't immense enough, there is plenty of documentation online though it's unlikely any of us breeders will know their intent. Probably to wre